The Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has subpoenaed Apple to give the details of its iPhone search deal with Google. The request is a result of the Google antitrust probe the FTC is currently conducting. Apple has been required to reveal the agreements it made to make Google the preferred search engine on the iPhone.

With Google creating services like Google+ that compete with the likes of Facebook, the FTC decided to start investigating the search giant’s business practices in June of last year to determine if there was an antitrust issue. As of today, Apple’s deal with Google will also be questioned to see if Google is unfairly leveraging its position in the internet search market.

Given Apple’s rocky relationship with Google, the results of this subpoena will definitely be interesting. It was recently discovered that Apple is beginning to divorce itself from Google Maps, and the two companies could part ways entirely by 2013.

I’ve said it once and I’ll say it again. All these useless, obstructive, protectionist, parasitical, government agencies need to just fucking DIE, and all the leeches they employ need to find REAL jobs in the PRODUCTIVE market!

Patrick M Phillips

Agree 100%

FCC, FDA, FTC, and the whole alphabet soup of violent technocrats who claim a monopoly of force, do nothing but impede innovation, crush competition, and stifle the whole market process. They’re worthless vestiges of the failed “progressive era,” where economic central planners, totalitarian technocrats, and eugenicists, would create, by means of coercion, a utopian new order of man.

The result’s been nothing but increased poverty, greater gaps in the division of wealth, and the triumph of mega-corporations who can afford to buy influence in the halls of power.

State “management” of markets is an old, tired, destructive, and IMMORAL ideology. But so long as the public school educated, duped public continues to endorse it, the political class and the financial elites they’re in bed with, will continue to laugh, as they cash in their checks, and YOU get poorer.

About the author

Alex Heath is a journalist and co-host of The CultCast who lives in Lexington, Kentucky . He has been quoted by the likes of the BBC, KRON 4 News, and books like "ICONIC: A Photographic Tribute to Apple Innovation." If you want to pitch a story, share a tip, or just get in touch, additional contact information is available on his personal site. Twitter always works too.

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